With his wife Jane W. Temerlin, Temerlin raised Lucy Temerlin, a chimpanzee owned by the Institute for Primate Studies at the University of Oklahoma at Norman, Oklahoma, in their home. Temerlin and his wife raised Lucy as if she were a human child, teaching her to eat with silverware, dress herself, flip through magazines, and sit in a chair at the dinner table. She was taught American Sign Language by primatologist Roger Fouts as part of an ape language project. Temerlin wrote the book Lucy: Growing Up Human: A Chimpanzee Daughter in a Psychotherapist's Family, analyzing the chimp's behaviour and describing her life.[3]

Temerlin collaborated academically with his wife on articles, including "Psychotherapy Cults: An Iatrogenic Perversion," which was published in Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice.[4] The work remains highly regarded, and is cited by numerous academicians, including Robert S. Pepper,[5][6]Michael Langone,[7] Guy Fielding and Sue Llewelyn,[8]David A. Halperin, and Arnold Markowitz,[9] and Dennis Tourish and Pauline Irving.[10]